The events of recent days are generating a few generalised points of consensus. One of the most widespread refers to the Mossos d'Esquadra, the Catalan police, and their effectiveness. Operational and communicative.
In terms of the first, they're demonstrating again that it's flawless (as I write this piece, there is an operation in progress in Subirats). And, in any case, when this nightmare is finally over will be the time for the overall analysis. Let's focus then on the second aspect.
From the beginning, the @mossos Twitter account has been offering information in practically real-time as to what is happening, as to the operations being carried out and offering advice and recommendations to the public. And it's been doing so in Catalan, Spanish and English. Their work has been hugely helpful in disspelling rumours and speculation and, above all, calms and gives confidence to the public.
These days we, the citizens, have learned to look at the @mossos account to find out directly what is happening. And we, the journalists, have learned to stop the rumours that reach us and only report facts confirmed by this account which, again, they offer in practically real-time and always as soon as the news is confirmed.
Regarding the communication from the Catalan Interior ministry, the political side led by Joaquim Forn has been flawless. He has explained what he needs to, hasn't put his foot in anything and has left the technical side to the person who knows about it, Mossos chief Trapero. And Trapero is communicating with a rigour that will have to be studied. Am I exaggerating? No, several foreign journalists working here these days have said it as have journalists as nonsuspicious as María Ramírez, daughter of the famous journalist and editor Pedro J Ramírez.
Translation: I've covered attacks in the US and in Europe and it's difficult to find a case where the authorities have communicated so well as the Mossos.
However, finally, the thing that had to happen has happened, something that had been circling for hours. Today, in the press conference from ministers Forn and Mundó (Justice) and Major Trapero, a journalist complained that they were speaking in Catalan and threatened to leave. In the end, they did indeed stand up, but stayed in the room:
Trapero's multilingual response "pues, molt bé, pues adios" (well, great, so bye) immediately became a hashtag that took off on social media, provoking responses like this one:
Translation: So there's an attack in Barcelona, all of Spain shows its support and your put your ideology before the common language #PuesMoltBéPuesAdiós
And that's exactly right. People like the author of this tweet or the journalist of the supremacist posturing (here you speak the language I say, when I say) believe that we speak Catalan here for ideology. That is, we speak our language, not because it's the natural way for us to express ourselves, rather to be a nuisance, to play politics. And they demand that, in a press conference that has been given in Catalan and Spanish, and where questions have been answered in Catalan and Spanish, only Spanish should be spoken. Come on, and this isn't a demand made for ideology? And, specifically, a totalitarian ideology? Or maybe it's just ignorance? Is it bad faith? Did they hit their head on the delivery room floor when they were born?
Well, maybe it's all of the above and we should add the concept of "peasant Catalan". It consists of looking at the world from your penthouse on Upper Diagonal or in Barcelona's Eixample neighbourhood and from your second residence on the Costa Brava thinking that the rest of the country are stinking, beret-wearing folk in the "countryside" who you look at saying "wow, how rustic!".